We can divide users of a voting system into four distinct roles: voters, authorities, auditors, and administrators.

As expected, voters are the players who cast ballots.

Authorities are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the election. They possess shares of the secret decryption key needed to recover the final election result. Authorities do not have more power than any other users.

Administrators are tasked with creating and maintaining current elections.

Auditors can consist of members of the previous three groups, as well as members of the public at large. They are able to perform tasks guaranteed by the property of universal verifiability, e.g., inspecting the election transcript, double-checking the final tally, etc.

These groups may overlap arbitrarily. For instance, it may be desirable to make the authorities a subset of the voters, so that the voters themselves can ensure the integrity of the election. Furthermore, the administrators might contain some members who are authorities, and some who are neutral parties. Finally, the auditors would contain all of the above members, as well as additional neutral parties.